


An Earthly Knight

by LtLJ



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Action/Adventure, Amnesia, Community: 14_valentines, Drama, Elves, Fantasy, Multi, Team, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-07
Updated: 2007-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-02 14:21:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LtLJ/pseuds/LtLJ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney flung his arms in the air. "Oh, great! So in nine months we're going to have to come back here to retrieve his half-elf half-human with a side order of Ancient babies? Because I thought this situation couldn't be more traumatic."</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Earthly Knight

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 14 Valentines: Day 7 Hunger.
> 
> Thanks to Mahoni and everybody who participated in the conversation that sparked the story, especially   
> Sageness for the Gelfling reference, and Springwoof for the links to "Tam Lin" for the title.

**Day One**

  
Later, John would remember walking through the ruin.

The structure wasn't as tumbledown as it looked, it had just been built without a roof, and the thick flowering vines had entwined above the pillars and crept over the moss-covered stone of the floor. The edge of the forest had pushed in through the open arches, blocking off passages that had once been completely open and airy. John wasn't wearing his jacket, just the tac vest over his t-shirt, because the air was nearly perfect, not too warm or too cool. Even the perfume of the flowers wasn't too heavy, blending in with the sharp green scent of the trees.

The scanners said no power, though Rodney kept picking up traces and weird anomalies he wanted to track down. John keyed his headset, asking, "Major, any luck with the life signs detector?"

"Negative, sir," Lorne replied. He was up in the jumper, trying to scan the surrounding area. "The HUD's got nothing but static."

_Great,_ John thought. He had been hoping it was just some temporary interference. "Rodney--"

"I know, I know," Rodney muttered over the channel. He was a few rooms behind John's position, with Teyla. Ronon was with Benson and Dr. Parrish, checking out the flora on the forest side of the ruin. "The handheld detector is working down here. From what I can tell there's some kind of field effect in the tree canopy that's interfering with life sign detection from the atmosphere, and probably some of the other scanning functions."

That sounded intriguing. John said, "If it does the same to Wraith tech and culling beams--"

"That would be a great discovery," Teyla finished, her voice sounding distant over the crackle of the radio signal.

"Don't get too excited yet," Rodney grumbled, and signed off.

John stepped into the room because it looked like there was carving on the pillars, something in Ancient writing. He tapped his headset again and said, "Rodney--" just as he felt a slight change in texture under his boots, from gritty stone to something smoother. He looked down, saw a moss-covered stone block under his feet, identical to all the other moss-covered stone blocks. Then it lit up. John thought, _Oh crap._

Everything went white, white light, white pain.

John dropped to his knees, shaking, sick. Something hurt, everything hurt. He clawed at his ear, knocking off the metal wrapped painfully around it. He grabbed at the heavy thing hanging around his neck, but pain shot through his hands and he let go, hissing in shock. His palms and fingertips were burned red from the brief contact, blisters already forming. _Dammit._ He pulled gingerly at the strap, but it was attached to him with a metal clip. Gritting his teeth as the metal seared his fingers, he unsnapped it and the thing fell away.

John shoved away from it, scrambling backward. That was a little better, but there was metal all over him. Wincing, he managed to drag the heavy vest off so he could get at the thin metal chain around his neck. It was under his shirt, burning against his chest. He yanked it off, breaking the chain, flinging it away with a gasp of relief. He got the belt off next, with everything attached to it, then finally the clunky things around his feet.

Finally free of it all, he slumped back on the pavement, breathing hard. There was a small amount of metal still in his clothing, some of it scarily close to his groin, but the cloth padding it was enough to protect him, and his hands hurt too much to tackle it now.

A voice called out, an alien voice, and John flinched, snapping back to alertness. There was movement somewhere past the vine-wreathed pillars. His nose twitched, and he could smell more metal, like something foul and burning in the air. And something more frightening, the sour stink of alien bodies. He rolled to a crouch, listening for their heavy footfalls in the loam and dead leaves, tracking their positions. Then he slipped between the pillars, into the undergrowth.

He crept soundlessly between the thin trunks of young trees, realizing with a shock that he was on the fringe of the forest. _What the hell are you doing here?_ he wondered. He moved faster, instinct telling him to get out of here, away from the dangerous open ground.

He pushed through the undergrowth, finally coming out into the shade of the real trees, the deep forest. The trunks were as big around as the ruin he had fled, stretching up to where the heavy green leaves and branches formed a dense multi-layered canopy high overhead. The ground here was soft and spongy, covered with a mossy grass that fed on the filtered green light. John took a deep breath in relief. _Yeah, this is right._

He could hear the aliens behind him, pushing through the brush, calling to each other. He started to run.

  
***

  
"I told you this shielding is like nothing we've encountered before," Rodney snapped.

They were over the first shock and into the guilt and recrimination stage. In between yelling orders at his team on the ground, Lorne kept turning to Rodney and saying, "You said there was no power. How the hell--"

"The power source wasn't active. It's probably drawing off solar radiation." Rodney crouched on the stone floor just outside the room in the Ancient ruin, scanner and tablet and tools spread around him, trying to figure out just what the hell had happened to Sheppard. It wasn't helping that the damn flowers were making him sneeze. "And if you'd stop interrupting me--" He looked up, as Teyla and Ronon pushed through the undergrowth at the end of the open passage. "Well?" he demanded.

Ronon shook his head, his expression too controlled to read. "We lost him. He doesn't leave tracks."

Lorne swore. "Life signs detector?"

Teyla pushed her hair back, and she looked deeply worried. "Dr. Parrish said he was out of range."

"Out of range?" Rodney repeated, horror settling in his stomach. Fast enough to outrun Ronon, to get past the life signs detector, not leaving tracks... Sheppard wasn't completely human anymore. Rodney had guessed it from the fragments they could read of the writing in this chamber, but having the confirmation was different.

When they had first reached this room and found Sheppard's weapons and gear strewn around, his watch, his dog tags, the others had all lost it, thinking he had been disintegrated. Despite his own terror, Rodney had shouted everybody down, pointing out nobody had ever been disintegrated yet just by walking into a room, despite their sick imaginations. Then Benson had radioed that he had caught a glimpse of Sheppard moving through the undergrowth toward the forest, and the chase had been on. Rodney asked, "Did you get a close look at him? What--"

Teyla shook her head, frustrated. "We could not get close enough." She asked Lorne, "The jumper?"

"They aren't picking up anything," he told her, grimacing. He let his breath out. "Look, folks, we'll find him. There's an archaeology and linguistics team on their way to help read all this stuff, and in the meantime--"

"I know, I'm doing it," Rodney snapped, turning back to the stone panel.

  
Teyla knelt beside him. "We will find him, do not worry," she said, quiet and fierce. "What can I do to help you?"

Rodney took a deep calming breath. "Right, right. Here, just clear away these vines."

  
***

  
John lost the aliens in the green shadows, but kept moving further into the forest. He finally found a stream, trickling over rocks, winding between the trees, and collapsed beside it in weary relief. He drank the sweet water, then used it to cool the reddened spots on his hands and chest. The blisters had already healed. He frowned, then shook his head. _No, that's right._ His injuries should heal this quickly, they always had.

He stretched out in the mossy grass at the stream's bank, testing the scents on the still air, using them to form a mental map of the terrain around him. Birdcalls and the hum of insects sounded from the forest's upper canopy. It felt all right and all wrong.

And he had no fricking idea why he had woken in a stone ruin on the dangerous fringe of the forest, with all that poisonous metal attached to his body, wearing clothing that stunk of something alien. He knew he wasn't supposed to be alone, but he had no idea where the others were. He kept wanting to get up and search for them, but he had no clue where to start. He bit his lip and closed his eyes, trying to remember faces, voices. All he could recall was vague shapes, teasing images that fled as soon as he tried to focus on them. He gave up, letting his breath out, rubbing his hands through his hair in frustration. "This is weird," he said aloud.

For some reason that kept eluding him, he wanted to see what he looked like. He pushed to his feet again, moved along the stream until he found a shallow cup in the rocks, forming a still pool.

He sat down, leaning over and looking at his reflection for a while, frowning. He felt the tip of his ear. _They were always that pointed?_ he wondered vaguely, not sure why it should bother him. _I always had those spots, too, right?_ Tiny faint spots of iridescence just under the skin on either side of his neck, disappearing up under his hair, vanishing under his shirt. He pulled at his collar, trying to look down his body to see how far they went. He was willing to admit that it was a little odd that he didn't already know that.

He sat bolt upright. Voices, calling frantically to each other, frantic movement.

John shoved to his feet, tilting his head, tasting the air. The commotion was too far away to hear, but he knew it was happening, and he knew which direction. He leapt across the stream, running toward it.

John tracked the disturbance unerringly, never hesitating, finding it by scent and sound. He fetched up against a tree, flattening himself against the trunk, sneaking a look around it.

He saw the woman first, her back toward him, then he saw the creature she was facing.

It had a huge flat round body, maybe ten paces across, balancing on ten segmented legs. It scrambled toward the woman as she dodged backward. She was clutching half of a broken spear shaft, and John saw the pointy end was jammed into the edge of the creature's shell, above the horror that was the mouth. She had missed the target, he realized, catching the tip in the hard tissue around the eye spots rather than the soft place that would have let her drive the weapon right through into the brain. He pushed away from the tree, running forward. He had to distract the thing, get her out of there. _Risarc,_ he remembered. That was what the creature was called. And then instinct took over and his only thought was _kill_.

He ran for the tree nearest the creature, leaping up to dig fingers into the soft bark, his feet catching on it. He climbed rapidly, high enough to give him some momentum, then shoved off with all his strength, turning in mid air to land on his feet on the creature's hard shell. It cracked under the impact, and the risarc snarled, lurching back and forth to shake him off. John crouched, stretching to wrap a hand around the shell's edge to steady himself, grabbing for the broken spear shaft. He wrenched it out, then lifted it high and stabbed it into the soft spot.

The creature jerked forward and John went flying, landing hard on the mossy ground. The breath knocked out of him, he rolled over to see the risarc stagger and collapse, black fluid leaking out of the wound.

"Gotcha," John muttered. He pushed himself up on his knees, shaking his head, woozy. A faint sound made him look up, and he froze. A dozen people were dropping out of the trees all around, surrounding him. _Uh oh,_ John thought. It belatedly occurred to him that maybe they wouldn't like him butting in on their hunt.

Most of them were female, dressed in soft clingy green-gray clothing, meant to blend into the bark. There were three males, hovering on the outer fringe of the group. They all looked like him, with dark hair, pointed ears, but their skin was smooth and very pale, tinged faintly with green. They all had the spots of iridescence, in all different patterns, glimmering in the dim light.

The woman who had been trying to kill the risarc dropped her spear shaft and came toward him. She crouched a few feet away, tilting her head to study him curiously. Like the others, she was beautiful, with sharp features and high cheekbones, her body slim but strong, dark hair flowing past her waist. She said, "You're different. Where do you come from?"

"I don't know," John told her, and realized they were both speaking a different language. _Different from what?_ he thought, frustrated. He had no idea. "I was just...here."

She edged closer, and he warily edged back a little. Then she leaned in to touch his face. Something sparked like electricity in the contact and he twitched, startled. Then she put both hands in his hair and pulled his head down, rubbing her cheek against his. John tensed, caught her shoulders, but part of him didn't want to push her away. "Uh, what--"

She took his hand, put it inside the gossamer-soft fabric of her shirt, against her breast. Her skin was warm and soft, the texture unexpected and familiar all at once. He was pretty sure this didn't usually happen to him. He said, "Wait, I can't--"

She pushed against him, then pulled back, staring. "Poison?"

John showed her the fading red burns on his hands. "The metal, it's in my clothes. I couldn't get it all off."

There was a murmur of sympathy from the others. Her perfect brow furrowed in understanding, and she said, "I'll help you."

His mind went blank and the next thing he knew they were on the ground, rolling in the sweet-smelling moss. "I really shouldn't--" he kept trying to say, but his body wasn't listening and neither was she. His clothes and hers were mostly gone and she was straddling his hips, and he tried to say again, "Are you sure you want to--" Then she covered him and all his objections melted away.

They moved against each other, fallen leaves rustling under their bodies. The others edged closer, watching attentively, and part of him thought it was natural while the other part, the part that couldn't seem to do anything, helplessly freaked out. She nipped at his ears, his neck, rubbing against those new sensitive spots on his skin to send electric sensations all down his spine. He had to shift, to get on top, and she keened with pleasure. When they lay tangled with each other, breathing hard, sweaty, and satisfied, she said, "What's your name?"

He nuzzled her neck again, breathing in her scent. "John."

She lifted her head and said to the others, "John is leader now."

  
**Day Two**

  
In the ruin, Rodney had half the stone panels removed from the floor of the transformation room, and was warily scanning the complex mass of crystal components. Carson Beckett stuck his head in the door and took a breath to say something. Rodney snapped, "Yes, I've figured out exactly what it did to him and how to reverse the process, but I was withholding the information until one of you specifically asked for it."

"Sorry." Carson sighed. "There's just not much else to do while the others are out searching."

There were currently three Marine teams, plus Ronon and Teyla, combing the forest for Sheppard. They had set up a small base camp in the open field not far from where the ruin stood at the edge of the immense forest. Though with two jumpers, three gate teams, and tents for medical, archaeology/linguistics, military, and Ancient tech, maybe the base camp didn't qualify as "small" anymore. "I know, I know," Rodney told Carson wearily. For all the progress he was making here, he might as well be out searching.

Across the room, Dr. Bannerman, crouched beside the wall with two colleagues from linguistics, looked up to say, "I think we've got something from this panel."

"Well?" Rodney demanded impatiently, not impressed. There was an immense amount of information in the faded wall-carvings to wade through, and none of it seemed to be anything that he needed to know. So far Bannerman's biggest contribution had been to trip and land on the device's panel, thus proving that it only worked on natural Ancient gene carriers, and not on humans who only had the ATA therapy.

Checking the notes on his tablet, Dr. Bannerman said, "The device is definitely for communication. The elves couldn't--"

Carson rolled his eyes. Late this morning, Lorne's team had managed to get some photos of the natives. "I wish you lot wouldn't call them elves."

Bannerman coughed. "Sorry. The native hominids seem to have refused any kind of interaction with the Ancients or humans, so this transformation device was the only way to communicate." He looked up, making a helpless gesture. "But I'm sure it isn't supposed to affect the subject's memory, otherwise he wouldn't remember what he was going out there to talk about. Something must have gone wrong, maybe because Colonel Sheppard isn't an Ancient."

Yes, that was about the level of help Rodney was getting here. "Oh, you think?" he snarled, and went back to work.

  
**Day Five**

  
John woke up the way he had for the past five mornings, in the warm bower in the home-tree, in a pile with the rest of his tribe. He stretched, yawning, and said, "Hunting today."

There was a groan from a few of the bodies around him. Stretched out against his side, her head pillowed on his chest, Iyelle said, "Are we moving the hunting ground again?"

"Yeah, maybe we can shake that thing this time." John absently rubbed the back of her neck. He had made them shift their hunting grounds three times in the past few days. Something had been stalking them, he could scent it on the air of the forest floor, metallic and coppery and wrong. If it kept up, they might have to look for a new home-tree.

Gitak, snuggled in on his other side, nipped John's ear. "I think we should go see what it is. Maybe we can hunt it."

"No, that's a bad idea," John told him patiently. That kind of thinking was one of the reasons Iyelle hadn't wanted to choose any of the tribe's three younger males as leader after the old one had died. They had gone without for a whole turn of the season, because Iyelle hadn't found an outsider she wanted until John.

The others were waking up around them, yawning, stirring, climbing on top of each other. John rolled over, settling down between Iyelle's legs. He rubbed his cheek against the side of her thigh, then nuzzled her. Humming in pleasure, she bent her knees and arched her back for him, her fingers wandering through his hair. Gitak crawled over to them, petting John's back, until Iyelle growled and lifted a foot to shove Gitak off. She dragged John up and wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him tightly against her. He was busy for a few minutes after that.

When they were done, he nipped her gently just below her ear, and shifted off her. She sat up, shaking her hair back, smiling. John stretched out on his back and yawned again, the soft feathery material that lined the bower catching on his skin. Gitak, desperate by this point, climbed on top of him, biting his shoulder and neck. John took a handful of his hair, pulling his head back, and shook him gently. "Easy," he said. "Remember our conversation about that?" John's skin wasn't as tough as theirs, though his teeth were just as sharp. Gitak nodded, chastened, and John let him go. Gitak settled in again, nuzzling John's neck, grinding against his hip.

Iyelle laughed. "At least they're learning manners."

Nyali, the next ranking female after Iyelle, fit herself in against John's side and propped her head on his shoulder, glaring resentfully at Gitak. "They could learn more."

"John is the best leader ever," Gitak said smugly, and there was a murmur of assent from all around. It was traditional for a leader from outside the tribe to chase away the younger males, but John had let them stay. Iyelle hadn't been sure about that, but he had told her it wasn't negotiable, he wasn't going to kick anybody out, and in the end she had agreed.

When the whole tribe was a big sated heap, John said again, "We're still going hunting." There was another groan of protest.

That first night, John had helped them cut up the risarc and carry it back to the home-tree. It was a huge tree, growing into the side of a bluff, so big and old its lowest branches bent toward the ground and the trunk had multiple folds from growing around boulders and smaller trees. The folds formed bowers and platforms and passages, a perfect living place for the tribe. A small waterfall running down the bluff had carved a path through the wood, and they used that for drinking water and bathing.

John had been leery of going up into the tree with them. The sex had been nice and everything, but he knew he was different, and he was a little worried they were planning to kill him and eat him. But it was getting dark and instinct told him he needed to be up off the forest floor and in the understory or canopy before night fell, and Iyelle and Nyali and the other women were very persistent. They had finally coaxed him up into the tree.

They had helped him wash away the alien stink that still clung to his skin, shared their food, and given him clothes like theirs, pants and shirt of gray-green fabric so light it was barely there, faded leather soft as skin, all meant to help him blend into the trees. Everybody had wanted to have sex with him, which was very intimidating at first, but Iyelle and Nyali kept that under control, sleeping on either side of him in the bower and growling at anybody who came too close. It wasn't until the next morning that he understood that by leader, they actually meant leader, as in telling them what to do. "We just met," he had pointed out, baffled. "You don't know me at all."

"Males as big and strong as you are rare now," Iyelle had explained, rubbing her cheek against his chest. "I had to claim you for us before anyone else got there."

There were things he knew that they didn't, that the spots in their skin must be sensory organs, taking in some kind of information carried in the air, or maybe in some field that the trees themselves were generating, and that his brain was interpreting it as scent and sound. That he was different from them, and not just because his skin was the wrong color and he had more body hair. That he had come from somewhere else, that he had lived with a tribe that had done other things besides look for food, sleep, and bang each other. But they all assured him that it didn't matter and they loved him anyway.

  
***

  
When they were scouting the new hunting ground, they met another tribe. Retreating higher up into the canopy, they found a branch wide enough for everyone to perch on comfortably. Iyelle and the other women sat around and talked, exchanging information on the terrain and hunting prospects, while John and their leader politely greeted each other.

"John, they have seen the alien creatures in the forest, the ones that came into our hunting grounds," Iyelle said.

"Yeah, in a minute." John was on his hands and knees, still coasting down from his second orgasm in way too short a time, waiting for the other tribe's leader -- _dammit, what was his name again? Kthel, that's it_ \-- to finish. He figured he knew now why they had a shortage of leader males: they all died early of exhaustion. Kthel thrust into him one last time, hands tightening on John's hips as he came. With an "oof" John eased down to lay flat on the smooth wood, pleasantly achy, every muscle relaxed. It was only mid-morning and he already needed a nap. _It's a rough life,_ he told himself. "What were you saying?" he asked Iyelle.

"The alien creatures that hunt us," she told him. "They have seen them."

Kthel stretched out next to him and rubbed the back of John's neck, fingers wandering through his hair. "They came close, but didn't try to attack," he said, continuing the conversation started before he had decided to give John a "hi, nice to meet you" blow job.

"Could you tell how many there were?" John asked.

"No. They all stunk of poison," Kthel said, by which he meant metal. "They didn't seem to have weapons."

"No, they have weapons," John said absently. To Kthel and the others weapons meant spears and knives, with blades made of sharpened animal bone. "They can kill from a distance."

Everybody took that in, impressed. "How do you know?" one of the women from the other tribe asked.

John hesitated. It was one of those things he just knew, without knowing how. But Iyelle said proudly, "John is wise," and that seemed enough of an answer for them all.

"We'll avoid the aliens," Kthel decided, nipping John in the back of his neck. "Shift our hunting."

John told him, "Just make sure you don't get caught on the ground near one of them."

He should have taken his own advice.

  
**Day Seven**

  
They didn't sense the aliens for two days, and when they did, they weren't even hunting. They were near the home-tree, climbing around the branches of a boca grove, collecting nuts. Well, the women were collecting nuts, and the young men were chasing each other, rattling the leaves. Sitting up on a branch with Iyelle, John had just bounced a nut off Danik's head as an admonition to stop being an idiot, when he sensed movement on the forest floor somewhere below them.

John went still, testing the air. Something alien, metal-stink. He hissed a warning and the others started to scramble further up into the trees.

Right below Gitak and Danik, a branch exploded in a shower of wood chips. They shrieked in alarm and fled up the tree. Iyelle flinched back against John, throwing him a horrified look.

_Bastard shot at us,_ John snarled inwardly. He squeezed Iyelle's wrist, then pointed up. She nodded, turning immediately to climb further up the tree, slow and quiet. John eased to his feet, pacing soundlessly along the branch, drawing his knife. It was long and very sharp, made out of a risarc's tooth.

He could tell there was only one alien, moving below them in near silence. The stink of metal was faint; it was how it had crept up on them unnoticed. When the creature stepped under him, John dropped.

He landed on its back and knocked it sprawling in the leaf loam. He wrapped an arm around its neck but it twisted, grabbing his knife hand. John wrestled with it, rolling over the mossy ground. It pinned him with its heavier weight and John bit into its arm, tasting sour blood. It growled but didn't loosen its grip on him. John slammed his head back. The blow stunned the creature for an instant and John twisted, kicked his way free, and leapt to his feet to bolt.

He was a step away from the tree when something hit him in the back and he staggered, his body going numb. _Uh oh,_ he had time to think, just before he hit the ground.

  
***

  
Ronon jogged into the clearing and deposited Sheppard at their feet. He was stunned unconscious, his wrists and ankles bound with plastic handcuff ties. Rodney crouched down with the others and stared. After the whole Iratus retrovirus incident, he had been expecting something a lot more traumatic. The ears were definitely more pointy, the skin on either side of his neck marked by faint dark spots that caught the dim green light. He was barefoot and that was a little weird, because there was a thick layer of gray skin on the bottom of his feet; from what they had observed of the other natives, it provided extra traction for tree-climbing. Other than that, Sheppard didn't look that different. Except for the ears. Rodney blurted out, "He's actually kind of cute."

Ronon gave him a look that clearly said he was seriously contemplating a punch in the mouth. "What?" Rodney demanded.

Ronon sighed, and looked at Lorne. "I fired up into the trees, thought he might come after me if it looked like I was attacking the others. He did. He's strong, and fast. Nearly took my head off." Ronon did seem to have a bloody nose and two black eyes. "He didn't recognize me at all."

Lorne winced. "Yeah, kind of figured that. Was he alone?"

Ronon shook his head. "He was with a group, like the others we saw."

Rodney nodded grimly. They had never picked up any single life signs, just groups of ten to fifteen individuals. They had managed to get close enough to three different groups to ascertain that Sheppard wasn't among them, but this group had proved elusive, always moving out of the area too fast to catch, no matter how quiet and careful the Marines were. Benson and his team had come back late yesterday, exhausted, reporting, "They're like deer, sir, if deer had life signs detectors and maybe air recon." That was when Lorne had decided to chance sending Ronon in alone.

Ronon added, "Most of them were females, maybe a couple of younger males, it was hard to tell. They weren't happy when I took him. Chased me until I lost them crossing the river."

They all absorbed that for a moment. Teyla took a sharp breath. Lorne's brow furrowed in worry. Cadman bit her lip, looking uneasy.

Rodney flung his arms in the air. "Oh, great! So in nine months we're going to have to come back here to retrieve his half-elf half-human with a side order of Ancient babies? Because I thought this situation couldn't be more traumatic."

Lorne clapped a hand over his eyes. Teyla just stared up at the tree canopy with an expression that suggested she was begging something for patience.

"Jesus, McKay." Cadman glared at him. "He's our CO, have a little respect, or something."

Ronon was looking at Rodney from under lowered brows. "What?" Rodney demanded again.

Ronon shook his head, turning back to Lorne. "There's another problem." He turned Sheppard's hand, showing them his palm. There was a square burn in the center, red and raw.

Rodney frowned. "What is that?"

Ronon pulled a folded square of leather off his belt, and Rodney saw it was one of the wraps he normally wore around his wrists. The buckle was a mirror image of the burn on Sheppard's hand. "What the hell..." Rodney muttered. "He's allergic to that metal?"

Lorne nodded slowly. "Maybe any metal. That would explain why he left all his weapons behind, the tac vest, dog tags..."

Rodney rubbed his forehead, appalled and exasperated. Most of the medical instruments Carson would use to find out just what had happened had metallic components of some kind. "God, that's all we need," he said wearily.

On the walk back, Lorne radioed base camp to tell Beckett about the metal allergy. Beckett muttered, "Bloody, bloody hell," and confirmed that taking Sheppard back to Atlantis was a bad idea until medical knew what else he was sensitive to.

"Besides," Rodney pointed out, "The device is here, and we'll only have to bring him back once I discover how to reverse the process." Not that Rodney could do much about that until the damn linguistics team finished their translation.

Ronon glared darkly at Rodney and threatened, "You'd better fix him."

Rodney snorted in derision. "Yes, very impressive threat, coming from someone who just got the hell beaten out of him by an elf."

  
***

  
Rodney paced the medical tent, waiting impatiently for Carson to say something besides "bloody hell."

Since the portable examination table was metal, Sheppard was lying on a thin pad stripped off one of the stretchers. He was still apparently unconscious, but his brow was furrowed slightly, as if he might be close to waking. Carson was standing over him with an Ancient medical scanner, and the nurses and medtechs were rummaging through their equipment, trying to figure out how to draw blood without using a needle.

Lorne walked back into the tent to say, "I reported to Dr. Weir."

"How is she?" Teyla asked. She was sitting cross-legged next to Sheppard, watching him with concern.

"About like we are." Lorne shrugged. "Relieved, and..."

"Freaking out?" Cadman suggested with a rueful grimace.

"Yeah, that," Lorne admitted. He studied Sheppard for a moment more, and said, thoughtfully, "Romulan."

Rodney gave him a look of withering contempt. "Hardly." Since they had managed to get the first pictures of the planet's hominid inhabitants, this had been an ongoing argument.

Cadman squinted at Sheppard. "He's right, Romulan ears aren't slanted back like that." It terrified Rodney that she actually knew that. She added, "More like a grown-up Gelfling." She turned to Teyla. "That's from--"

"If it is something from a popular entertainment, I do not want to know," Teyla said, setting her jaw. Rodney suspected Teyla had run out of patience during the _Lord of the Rings_ portion of the debate.

"Could all of you please get out," Carson said absently, still studying the scanner.

"Good luck, doc," Lorne said, with one last worried look back, and he and Cadman left.

Ronon and Teyla didn't budge, and Rodney sat down on a folding stool. _Definitely not Romulan,_ he thought, studying Sheppard. He wondered if the spots were some sort of sensory organ. They knew that the trees were broadcasting an energy field that interfered with scanning from atmosphere, and the prevailing theory among everybody, including the botanists, was that the elves must be able to tap into that field, use it to receive sensory information over a long distance. It would explain why Marine teams trained to be stealthy in all sorts of offworld situations had had so much trouble tracking them. Frowning thoughtfully, Rodney reached out and gently touched one ear tip.

That turned out to be a big mistake.

Sheppard's head whipped around almost too fast for Rodney to see. Rodney yelped and jerked his hand back. Then Sheppard snapped the plastic ties around his wrists and Rodney was falling backward and flailing away.

Teyla flung herself on Sheppard to pin him down. Sheppard tossed her into Rodney's lap. Flattened under Teyla, Rodney didn't see what happened next, but Sheppard must have ripped his feet free and flung himself at the door. Rodney heard a stunblast from Ronon's gun as Teyla rolled off him. He scrambled up in time to see Sheppard hit the ground unconscious just outside the tent. It had happened so quickly half the medical staff didn't have a chance to yelp with alarm until it was over.

"My God," Rodney gasped. "That was...that was..."

"Unexpected," Teyla agreed, sounding taken aback.

"I told you he was fast," Ronon commented dryly, holstering his weapon and going to collect Sheppard.

"So you did," Carson said, wide-eyed, clutching his scanner to his chest.

Teyla stood, giving Rodney a hand up. Rodney stumbled, still shocked, as Ronon put Sheppard back down on the pallet and pulled more handcuff ties out of his belt. Rodney realized his finger was bleeding and that it hurt, a lot. "Carson, he bit me!"

"Tell me about it." Ronon snorted, and showed Rodney a large discolored bite mark on the inside of his arm.

"Harpreet, hydrogen peroxide for Dr. McKay and Ronon, please." Beckett shook his head, looking down at Sheppard with an agonized wince. "We can't keep him tied up like this, and we can't keep stunning him, it's bloody cruel. But we can't take him back to Atlantis; I have no idea how badly the proximity of all that metal would affect him. Even the short trip in the jumper might be too much."

Ronon threw him an uneasy look, possibly contemplating having to chase Sheppard down again. "I wouldn't recommend letting him go."

"I know that, son." Beckett tapped the scanner against his chin, lost in thought.

Rodney snapped his fingers, then winced, tucking his hand in his armpit. "I can rig up a force-shielded enclosure, something we could set up in the open, where it's easier to guard. We'd just have to make sure he couldn't tunnel out."

"Perfect," Beckett said, relieved. "Teyla, love, we'll need to borrow some things from you and the Athosians--"

She nodded immediate understanding. "A wooden cot, wood or clay containers for food and water, other camping items. I will ask Major Lorne to send a jumper back to Atlantis immediately."

  
**Day Seven, Evening**

  
John opened his eyes a slit, and thought, _this has got to be a trick._ He was alone in a dark tent, lying on something soft. He wasn't tied up. It was night outside, though there was light coming in through the door flaps.

He couldn't remember much of the past few hours, just bright light, and being touched by alien hands. He didn't think they had done anything to him; he didn't hurt anywhere. But he knew now he had been here before. Somehow this was how he had ended up at the edge of the forest, unable to remember anything.

He shoved the blanket away and sat up, climbing to his feet. His head hurt and he felt sick, though maybe that was from hunger and the stink of metal, close and overpowering. He was wearing different clothes, too, a tight dark shirt, the same kind he had been wearing when he had first woken in the ruin, and pants of some kind of slick soft material. The fabric felt alien, but whatever, at least they hadn't put metal on him again.

There was a little table with a couple of covered dishes, and a clay jar for water. From the scent he could tell one dish contained fruit, the other meat from a selk, a small climbing creature the tribe hunted for food. It meant they intended to keep him alive for a while.

John bit his lip, thinking that one over. He didn't know why they wanted him; instinct told him that anything he didn't understand probably wanted to eat him. He could hear their voices not too far away, sense movement all around him. He stepped to the tent flap, crouching to peer cautiously out.

There were lights on poles, harsh and bright, emitting a low hum that made his teeth ache. They were just far enough away to leave the area around this tent in shadow. He couldn't see much past that ring of brightness, but he could smell the tents of the alien camp all around him, hear strange voices and weird sounds. _This is really disturbing._ No one was near enough to watch him, as if he could just slip out and make a run for the fringe; it couldn't be that easy.

John crouched low, easing out under the flap, and cautiously stood. The air was tainted by all the alien bodies and devices. From this angle he could see two thick metal pillars planted in the ground, each about ten paces from the front of the tent. They were glowing a little, a faint blue light. _Huh._ And maybe that irritating hum wasn't coming from the lights, but those pillars. He stepped sideways, looking around the tent. There were two pillars behind it, forming a square around the tent.

John had a bad feeling about this. He stepped cautiously forward, holding out his hand. As he drew even with the pillars, blue fire snapped out at him, stinging his skin. He leapt back, heart pounding. _Yeah, I knew there was a catch._

John sensed movement past the circle of lights and scrambled back inside the tent. He heard voices outside, but it was all just alien noise, incomprehensible.

He retreated to the back corner, sinking down against the canvas wall. As cover, it sucked, but it was all he had, the thin tarp the only thing between him and all that open air. _And things were going so well, too,_ he told himself grimly.

  
***

  
"Well?" Rodney demanded, as Carson and the two Marines with Wraith stunners came out of the force shield enclosure. Rodney and Teyla were waiting under the floodlights, between the force shield and the medical tent. Sheppard had been conscious for three hours now, and Carson had just gone in to check on his condition.

Frowning with worry, Carson said, "He's still not responding to any attempt to communicate. And he did take some of the water, but he didn't eat, not even that thing Ronon went out and caught for him." He looked back toward the tent, letting his breath out. "I was afraid of that."

"Why?" Rodney demanded. Sheppard was a picky eater even when he was human, but this was ridiculous. "What does that mean?"

"From what Bannerman and the others are finding out from their translation, the natives here don't avoid contact with other human species because they're isolationist. There are elements of their physiology that make it physically painful to be in close contact with us, like the sensitivity to iron and other metals." Carson rubbed his face wearily. "I just don't know how a being like that could last for any length of time in this kind of captivity. Any kind of captivity, for that matter."

"That's not a 'being like that' in there," Rodney said, a sick sensation settling in his stomach. "That's Sheppard."

"He doesn't know that, Rodney," Carson said patiently. He shook his head again. "I've got to get back and check the results on the lab work."

Carson started back to the medical tent, and Rodney and Teyla just stood there. Rodney said, "This is..."

"I know," Teyla finished, sounding depressed. "I know."

  
**Day Nine**

  
By morning, John felt like crap.

The noise, the poisonous air, the awareness that except for the tent he was in the open. He was exhausted and sick, but he couldn't sleep, and he just sat in the back corner of the tent, waiting for them to come in and do something to him. They came in a lot, but all they did was point little humming boxes at him that made weird vibrations in the air. After the third time, he just curled up and ignored them. If he was lucky, it would make them careless. But he was beginning to think they had just brought him here to watch him die.

Listening to them talk was a little weird. Sometimes it was almost like he could understand them. _You're losing it, John,_ he told himself, and pulled a blanket over his head, trying to drown them out.

Once the expectation of torture started to fade, he added bored and lonely to the total. He missed being with the others, exploring the endlessly fascinating forest, finding out all the things he had apparently forgotten. He hoped they were all okay. He had dropped out of their lives as abruptly as he had dropped in, and he didn't expect that they were looking for him. _I hope not,_ he thought grimly. It was bad enough that he was trapped here.

  
***

  
Rodney spent the whole day in the ruin, the way he had spent all his other days here, working on the device and snarling at linguistics and archaeology when they climbed over him to uncover more sections of the carved writing.

It wasn't that the damn device was complicated, though of course, it was unimaginably complicated. It was that it didn't seem to have any kind of controls. There wasn't even an on/off switch, physical or mental. Anybody with a strong enough expression of the Ancient gene just stepped in and bam, he was an elf.

Swearing, Rodney rubbed his eyes. Unfortunately, after days of work, he was grudgingly beginning to believe the reverse wasn't true. The device didn't save the original DNA scan, and it didn't seem to have any function for turning elves back into humans. Even elves that had started out as humans.

The thing he was most afraid of was that the device that reversed the process was somewhere else, in another ruin buried deep in the forest. With the interference blocking the jumpers' scanning functions, it would be impossible to find.

"Dr. McKay, it's getting dark, we need everybody to fall back behind the perimeter."

Rodney looked up, blinking, to find Benson standing over him, with Ronon looming out in the passage. He was right, the light was starting to fail, an exotic chorus of alien insects starting up in the background. "What? Why? We didn't do that last night."

"We're getting some activity on the life signs detectors," Benson said, eyes on the undergrowth past the pillars. "Major Lorne doesn't want anybody out here tonight."

"By activity, you mean..." Rodney made a vague gesture toward his ears.

Benson nodded grimly. From the passage, Ronon added, "We took one of them. They might try to take one of us."

  
***

  
Bannerman and his assistants headed for their tent, Bannerman saying, "Don't worry, Dr. McKay. We've been filming the text as we uncovered it, so we can keep working."

"Yes, I'll hold my breath," Rodney told him sourly.

The floodlights were beginning to come on as the shadows lengthened. Rodney found Teyla standing outside the enclosure. Before he could ask, she said, "Dr. Beckett had just been inside." She looked tired and drawn. "He said there is no apparent change, but he still has to analyze the readings."

"Right." Rodney had been proud of the force shield enclosure at first. And as a solution, it was still the best they had. But looking at it was depressing, like a bad old-fashioned zoo from the fifties. And all Sheppard had done so far was hide in the tent, apparently waiting for them to do God knows what to him.

Nobody had talked about what they would do if they couldn't reverse this. If Rodney couldn't reverse this.

They were all confidently, impatiently expecting him to fix it. Just like Sheppard would be, if this had happened to Lorne or one of the other gene carriers. Except Sheppard would be standing over him checking his watch, demanding to know how long it would take.

Except the time limit was tighter than anybody had anticipated. If their choice was to keep working until Sheppard died, or just let him disappear into the forest... Rodney set his jaw. _It's not going to come to that._  
Teyla said suddenly, "I will go in and try to speak to him."

Rodney looked at her, startled. "Are you sure that's safe?" Dubious, he squinted at the tent in the dim light. "He nearly took Ronon's head off."

"He has not been violent toward Dr. Beckett or the others when they went into the enclosure to examine him." Teyla made a frustrated gesture. "And I simply cannot stand here and wait while he--"

Rodney's mouth twisted. "While he sits in there thinking he's been abducted by aliens. Right." He took a sharp breath. "I'll go with you."

The two Marine guards came to the edge of the force shield with them. "Just yell if...you know," Petersen said. He looked sympathetic, but then a couple of months ago he had cut his hand on a piece of broken glass while searching an alien ruin, and had ended up turning into a Neanderthal for two days, so he probably had more perspective on this than most.

"Right, very reassuring," Rodney muttered, and took the control module, hitting the sequence to open a passage in the field.

He and Teyla stepped through, and Petersen closed it behind them.

There was a flurry of startled rustling from the tent. Rodney called, "Sorry, sorry. It's just me. And Teyla." He moved forward, and gingerly pulled back the tent flap.

Sheppard was at the back of the tent in a crouch, watching them warily. He had pulled a couple of blankets off the cot and made what looked like a nest in the back corner. It didn't look like he had touched anything else in the tent, including the pottery dishes with food and water that sat on the little wooden folding table. Ronon kept going into the forest, hunting the creatures the elves used as food sources, but so far Sheppard hadn't touched any of it.

Rodney made a nervous gesture. "I'd bring you something to keep you occupied, but considering you won't talk to us, I don't know whether you'd be more interested in magazines or a little rubber ball and some string."

Teyla gave him a look that said very clearly that she was about at the end of her rope. She said tightly, "Rodney."

Rodney winced. "I know." The way Sheppard was watching them, as if they were alien creatures, made him profoundly uneasy.

Teyla sighed. "Perhaps we should just sit outside for a while, give him time to get used to our presence."

"Right." Rodney left the tent flap pulled back, and they went to sit on the ground in front. He pulled out his tablet to go over the scanner readings of the device again, and Teyla went into her meditation position.

The air was pleasantly cool and the camp fairly quiet, the two Marines a reassuring presence not far past the force shield; soon Rodney was sunk just as deep into concentration on the numbers and schematics as Teyla was into her meditation. But he wasn't as limber, and he had been sitting on the ground all day. He looked up, stretching his sore neck. It was so quiet, and the twilight dim enough, that it took him a moment to realize Sheppard was outside the tent, barely a foot away from Teyla.

Rodney drew breath to warn her. Teyla opened her eyes, giving him a glare. It was clear she knew Sheppard was there.

They sat there in absolute stillness for a time, and Rodney felt his back starting to cramp from tension. He snuck a look at the Marines. The other one had backed off, but Petersen was crouching not far from the force shield, watching alertly, one hand on his headset. Rodney realized just how quiet the camp was, at a time when people should be taking dinner breaks, and knew Lorne or Beckett must have ordered everyone to shut up and get out of sight.

Sheppard edged closer, all his attention on Teyla, until he was barely a hairsbreadth away. Then he leaned in and nuzzled her neck. Teyla gave a slight start.

"Are you all right?" Rodney whispered quickly.

"Yes." Teyla's expression was somewhere between disconcerted and hopeful. Sheppard was still half-curled around her, apparently very interested in the back of her neck. "He...nibbled me." She lifted her brows in ironic comment. "I do not believe it was meant in a hostile way."

Rodney snorted, dizzy with relief. This was the first time Sheppard had treated any one of them as anything but hostile captors. "Lucky you. He bit the crap out of me."

Half concealed by Teyla's hair, Sheppard said, "You touched my ear."

"I thought you were unconscious!" Rodney snapped, guilty. Then he stared. "Wait, did he just talk?"

Teyla captured Sheppard's hand before it wandered any further up her thigh and said, "You remember us?"

He pulled away abruptly, but she kept hold of his hand. He said, "No. Why did you bring me here?" His voice was low and quiet, but he sounded like himself.

She met his eyes and said deliberately, "Because you belong with us."

"She's right," Rodney said, his heart pounding. "You're one of us, a member of the Atlantis expedition, the commanding officer. We came here from Earth."

Sheppard's eyes narrowed, then he pulled away from Teyla and vanished back into the tent.

Well, it was a start. Rodney touched his headset. "Carson! He just talked, and he understood us."

Carson's excited reply came immediately, "That's because we think it's wearing off."

  
***

  
They were all out there yelling at each other. John had retreated into the tent, and all the noise was making his head ache. They had come in again and pointed the humming boxes at him, but went out without trying to do anything. He had no idea what that was about. And the fact that their language had started to make sense to him was just one more freaky thing to deal with.

"The effect is apparently designed to reverse after a certain time period. From this, it looks like it should only have lasted a little more than one planetary rotation. Which makes sense, because--"

"Bannerman, stop telling me what makes sense! Carson, dammit--"

"This last scan confirms that something is happening. There's been distinct changes in his brain chemistry and--"

"But why has it affected him so long, if it was only meant to last a day?"

"Same reason he lost his memory, because--"

"Bannerman, shut up, she wasn't talking to you! Carson--"

"Because he isn't an Ancient, Rodney."

John still didn't understand most of the words. They sounded familiar, but it was like he was missing the context.

The woman had said, _Because you belong with us._ He had known he must have been here, before he woke in the ruin with their metal all over him.

But one thing he was sure of was that he would rather be safe in the forest while he figured this out, and not stuck in a cage.

"Dr. Beckett, any chance it'll wear off tonight? We've got well over two hundred life signs in the woods around the camp. My guess is they know we've got him here, and they aren't happy about it."

Now that, John understood. _Two hundred,_ he thought, startled. So they had looked for him. And Iyelle and the others must have gathered every tribe in the area. It was unexpected. And...really nice.

Now he just had to reach them.

John eased up to the tent flap, staying in the shadows.  
He hadn't tried to escape since that first failed attempt, hadn't made any attempt to resist at all. They had to be overconfident by now, a little careless.

There were seven of them, some inside the energy field, some outside, all talking at once. The armed ones wanted the others to go into the tents, get under cover in case there was an attack.

Then they opened the field for those inside to come out.

John flung himself out of the tent, ducked, rolled, and dived through the opening. Someone yelled, someone tried to tackle him. John slammed past him, knocked someone else down, and kept going. Blue fire splashed on the ground just beyond his feet, he dodged, and then he was past the lights and running.

The whole place seemed to explode, aliens and lights everywhere. John knew they would expect him to run full out for the forest, and that they could catch him easily on the open ground between the camp and the fringe. He ducked between their tents, keeping to the shadows, working his way around to the opposite side of the camp.

John reached the outer edge, where two big rectangular metal boxes loomed in the dark. There was no one near them and he circled around, using them as cover.

Then he stopped. Because it was like something had spoken to him. Something wordless and alien and familiar all at once. He stared at the dark boxes. _Okay, that didn't just happen._

He realized the boxes weren't quite square. The corners were rounded and their lines were just slightly curved, in a way that seemed to mean something to him. Cautiously, he moved closer. The moonlight glinted on the dark metal, and the big glass windows across the front. He stepped up to the first as close as he dared. He could see a room inside, too dark to make out much detail, the glint of a few tiny blue and green lights. It spoke to him again, and he twitched, startled. _You're imagining it,_ he thought, backing away.

Then the second one spoke to him.

  
***

  
Swearing, Rodney paced around in the dark, yelling over his headset at the science team, "Groups, form groups!" Sheppard should be the only single blip on the life signs detector, if everybody would stop running around and get in their damn tents. "If you're too stupid to listen you have no right to--" Swinging around the dark bulk of the jumper, he frowned at his screen. "Wait, who's--"

"What is this?"

Rodney froze. The figure standing about a foot away from him, barely visible in the dark, was Sheppard.

Rodney casually tapped his headset, opening the channel. He said, "They're puddlejumpers. Gateships."

"Gate?" Sheppard repeated it warily.

"The stargate. The one for this planet is in orbit, I can show you a video file--" Sheppard stepped away. "Or not," Rodney finished. In his headset all the traffic had gone dead, except for Lorne, whispering orders to form a perimeter around the jumpers. "They fly," Rodney said hurriedly. Anything to keep Sheppard's attention, keep him talking, keep him from running for the forest before the others could block the way. "You make them fly. You're a pilot, do you remember that? Of course not, if you did this situation wouldn't be quite so-- Right. But--"

Sheppard reached out a hand to the jumper, then jerked it back.

"Careful. It's metal." Sheppard's head turned toward him, and though Rodney couldn't read expression in the dark, he had the feeling he had just been given a particularly acid look. "All right, fine, you know that."

Sheppard looked at the jumper again. Rodney wondered if those sensory spots on his skin might be magnifying the ATA's broadcast. He said, "Can you feel anything from it? Normally you have to be in physical contact, but under the circumstances--"

Jumper One's interior lights flashed on. Sheppard jerked back a step, wincing away from the sudden light. "You did that," Rodney said quickly. "That was you."

Sheppard stared at him, then at the jumper. He shook his head in helpless frustration, waving an arm, taking in the entire camp. "I don't live here, like this. I know that."

"Of course not. We live up there." Rodney pointed up, at the starfield. It was an overuse of poetic license maybe, but he was trying to make a point here.

Sheppard stood there for a long moment, looking up. Then he wavered back and forth. "I feel a little sick," he said, and started to fold up.

Rodney dropped the detector, lurched forward to catch him, bellowing, "Carson!"

  
**Day Ten**

  
John was sitting on a heavily padded examination table in the medical tent while Beckett did yet another scan of him. He still felt like crap, but at least he knew who he was. "About the, uh..." He had already told Beckett that he had been basically married to a small tribe of elves.

Beckett shook his head, checking the notes on his tablet. "I ran some tests, and even altered, your DNA wasn't compatible with theirs. So no worries about wee babies."

"Oh." John stared at the tent wall, trying not to be disappointed. It wasn't like he had time to raise kids, particularly while sharing custody with several different elf-women who, after he finished changing back to completely human, he wouldn't be able to communicate with. But he was still having random instinctive urges, like to hide under things when he was in the open, or to climb a tree and drop onto Ronon's head.

John had spent the night in the medical tent, wrapped in blankets, sick and sweating and having migraine headaches. He had known there were people taking care of him, giving him water, and cautious amounts of drugs, and putting cold compresses on his head. After a few hours, he had started to recognize Beckett and the nurses, and had called Harpreet by name. Beckett had asked, "Do you know your name?"

"John. Colonel John Sheppard, USAF-- Oh." And it had all started to come back, big blotches of memory.

John had asked at one point, "Why is it taking so long?" He could remember stepping into the room in the ruin, and it had hurt like hell, but it had been over in an instant.

"It's meant to work on Ancients only," Beckett had told him. "We're damn lucky the effect is reversing at all."

John hadn't felt lucky.

Now he shifted uncomfortably on the examination table; even with the heavy padding, the metal still made him itch. "Where's Rodney and Teyla?"

"Sound asleep," Beckett reported, still studying his screen. "With all the searching and trying to figure out that damn machine, they didn't get much rest this week." He smothered a yawn.

John winced, feeling guilty. "Sorry about that."

Beckett set the tablet down and leaned on the table, giving him a hard look. "Colonel, it was pure bad luck. Nobody knew the thing was in the ruin, it wasn't showing on the scans. It could have just as easily been you chasing Lorne through the woods for a week, or me, if I'd been there."

John shrugged uncomfortably. He rubbed at his neck, and knew the sensory spots were slowly starting to fade. He said, "I need to go take care of this, before..."

"All right, then." Beckett nodded, but his brow was creased with concern. "Just take it slow, you've still got a few days of recovery in front of you."

John walked out of the tent, squinting at the too bright sunlight. The camp was quiet, everybody sleeping in after a long week and an anxious night. Lorne was waiting, with Ronon and a couple of the Marines. "Colonel, are you sure this is a good idea?" Lorne asked, sounding a little uneasy. "There's a lot of them out there."

John looked toward the edge of the forest, cool and green, the big trees looming temptingly. "It's okay. They aren't big on violence."

Lorne and the Marines looked at Ronon, who had two black eyes and a big bite mark on his arm. John amended, "Unless they're provoked." He forced himself to add, "Sorry."

Ronon shrugged, and they started to walk. John was still barefoot, and he realized his feet were starting to hurt, the extra layers of skin necessary for fast tree climbing itching and starting to flake off. He had a mild flashback to recovering from the Iratus bug retrovirus, and grimaced. _Yeah, that's going to be fun._ It would probably be a while before he could wear shoes.

They reached the edge of the forest fringe, and John signaled Lorne and the others to stop. Ronon trailed along with him, asking, "Sure you want to go alone?"

John threw him a look. "Yes." He wasn't certain how the others would react. He wasn't certain they would even recognize him, now that he had started to change back. He just knew he had to do this before he lost all memory of how to talk to them. It wasn't just a different language he realized now. It had something to do with the sensory spots, and their ability to read the energy field the forest generated.

Ronon hesitated, them looked at the ground and said, "I wouldn't have hurt them." It was one of those sudden changes, when he sounded like a big teenager. "But that was the only way to get you to come out."

"Yeah, I know." John realized part of him, the part that still wanted to bolt into the trees, hadn't known, and that's where the weird directionless anger he had been feeling toward Ronon had come from. The sudden realization washed the anger away, and he said honestly, "We're good."

Ronon nodded, and turned to go back to Lorne. John walked on into the cool green shadows.

Moving through the undergrowth, past the first line of saplings, he felt a rush of immediate relief. But it also felt wrong. He could tell he was losing touch with the energy field; he couldn't mentally map the forest around him, there was no awareness of motion at a distance. Though he knew the others were close. John said, "Hey, it's me."

Iyelle dropped out of the branches, landing lightly on the mossy ground. She stared at him for a moment, a frown creasing her brow "You're different. You smell like them."

"Yeah." He scratched his head. "Sorry about that. Look, I--"

She grabbed his wrist and tugged him toward the forest. "Come anyway."

She managed to tow him a couple of paces before he planted his feet. "I can't. I'm still changing. In another day, I won't be able to talk to you."

Her eyes narrowed, but she didn't let him go. "They stole you."

"They had me first, I just didn't remember it."

She looked away, glaring at the ground. He knew that would get through to her. If another group had prior claim, trying to lure him away was wrong. Finally she shook her head, and admitted, "I knew you must have come from somewhere. But I thought..."

"Yeah." John heard movement in the branches overhead, and someone dangled a hand down, tugging sadly on his hair. "Sorry," he said again.

  
***

  
When John came out of the undergrowth, Rodney and Teyla were waiting nearby, while Ronon, Lorne and the Marines were still standing a short distance away.

"Are you all right?" Teyla asked, watching him with concern.

"Yeah." John rubbed his eyes, glancing toward the forest again. "They understood, it was fine."

"That is not quite what I meant," she said, lifting her brows.

John shrugged, and made himself smile. "I'm fine, too."

Rodney folded his arms skeptically. "Of course you are. You just spent a week thinking you were an alien elf."

"It wasn't traumatic, Rodney," John said, annoyed. He started back toward the camp, trying not to limp. "It was just...weird."

Rodney snorted. "Oh please, give me a little credit."

John stopped, eyeing him suspiciously, but Teyla added with a wry expression, "We did not think you were fighting to go back because you hated it."

John looked away and smiled, a real smile this time, and had the sudden urge to tackle Rodney and Teyla into the grass, just for understanding. He suspected that he was going to spend the next couple of days working on impulse control issues. He admitted, "Well, yeah."

They walked back across the field, and John felt the pull of the forest lessen with every step.

  
**end**


End file.
